Jeb Bush Looks Even More Conservative On Immigration Than These Top Republicans

Jeb Bush’s reversal
on immigration reform throws a wrench into the conventional
wisdom surrounding the 2016 presidential election, where many
expected Bush would run as a moderate antidote to Mitt Romney’s
hardline campaign. His latest stance could put him to the right
of a number of potential rivals, several of whom only recently
came out for reform themselves. Here’s a rundown of five top tier
Republicans’ position on a path to citizenship, from clearest to
vaguest:

Sen. Marco
Rubio (R-FL)
Just two months ago, Rubio was publicly against not only a path
to citizenship but the very notion of comprehensive immigration
reform while Bush was sniping at unnamed “shortsighted”
politicians (hint,
hint) who favored a weak “piecemeal” approach to reform.
Now Rubio is working his heart out trying to sell conservatives
on comprehensive
reform with a path to citizenship and Bush has pulled
his previous support for the policy.

Rep. Paul
Ryan (R-WI)
Ryan’s also come a long way since last year, when he was running
alongside a presidential nominee advocating “self deportation”
and ruling out citizenship even for young undocumented
immigrants. He’s been a vocal supporter of the Senate’s reform
efforts and has come
out decisively for a path to citizenship himself. From
an appearance last month on ABC’s This Week:

Jon Karl: Let’s just be clear, you have said you would support an
immigration bill that included a pathway to citizenship correct?

Congressman Paul Ryan: Yes, absolutely because we think there
is a way to do this through earned legalization without
rewarding people who have come in with undocumented status,
illegally. We don’t want to give them an advantage over those
who came here legally and we think that there’s a way to do
this while still respecting the rule of law. It’s clear that
what the President is talking about does not do that…

Sen. Rand
Paul (R-KY)
The leading tea party hopeful for 2016 is an immigration
moderate. He told Politico shortly
after the election he favors an “eventual” path to citizenship
and has since
said the party needs to “evolve” on the issue, outlining
a framework for a bill that sounds relatively similar to the
Senate “Gang of 8” plan, which Rubio has endorsed.

Gov. Chris
Christie (R-NJ)
Already assailed on the right for some of his more moderate
positions, Christie appeared to endorse immigration reform
including citizenship for illegal immigrants way back in 2010.

“The president and the Congress have to step up to the plate,
they have to secure our borders and they have to put forward a
commonsense path to citizenship for people,” he
told ABC’s
Jake Tapper at the time.

He clarified his answer later in an interview with Sean
Hannity (now pro-citizenship himself), saying he meant a
pathway to citizenship for legal immigrants
(which is kind of an odd phrase to drop in that context).
However, he added: “I don’t think you’re going to be able to say
every person who’s in this country illegally is going to go back
to their country of origin, that’s not going to happen. But I
don’t think … people who are here illegally should be able to cut
the line in front of people who are doing the process the right
way.” That rhetoric is largely in line with immigration reformers
like Rubio and President Obama today, who frequently describe
their own path to citizenship in identical terms.

Christie hasn’t been too vocal on the issue since. But he did
accept the endorsement of his state’s Latino Leadership Alliance
for his re-election campaign this month, telling its members that
the GOP needs to do more to appeal to Latinos. The group’s
leader, Martin Perez, is a longtime supporter of Christie and
told the Newark
Star Ledger that the governor privately assured him he
backs comprehensive reform with a path to citizenship. Christie
has not commented on his account of their conversation.

Gov. Scott
Walker (R-WI)
Walker’s position on immigration is somewhat murky. Politico interpreted
comments he made at a recent event as an endorsement of a path to
citizenship, but he subsequently told the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that
he hasn’t
worked out his final position.

“I think long term that’s going to be a part of it but I think
there are too many people here in Washington who are leapfrogging
over everything else and trying to get to that right away,”
Walker told the Journal Sentinel when asked
whether he’d taken a position on citizenship . “We fundamentally
don’t have a system … to legitimately deal with people who want
to come — in fact, I think you would greatly reduce if not
outright eliminate the number of people who come in illegally if
we had an effective, time-effective particularly, system of
dealing with legal immigration.”

So mark him down as a “maybe” for now.

Bush addressed his immigration proposals during an appearance
Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”: